{"id":1988,"date":"2010-11-08T23:36:46","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T23:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/08\/it_gets_better\/"},"modified":"2024-11-30T12:17:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T20:17:15","slug":"it_gets_better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/08\/it_gets_better\/","title":{"rendered":"It Gets Better"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Overall, I\u2019m a big fan<\/strong> of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itgetsbetterproject.com\/\">It Gets Better<\/a> project. I think it\u2019s an incredibly important message to send out into the world, if only because there are so many kids who really, really need to hear it, and get a little strength and encouragement from it. The world isn\u2019t an easy place, and I know the truth really is that \u2014 as a wise friend of mine expains \u2014 <a title=\"Nervous Acid\" href=\"http:\/\/nervousacid.org\/post\/1344954126\/it-gets-complicated\">it gets complicated<\/a>. Overall, though, I\u2019m for the effort, and regularly touched by the variety of ways I see the idea repeated, and the variety of people who have taken the time to repeat it. Tonight I found this one by <a href=\"http:\/\/mistershowbiz.com\">Murray Hill<\/a> and friends, and it was immediately my favorite:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KByY3VP3Nys?si=NVeNx2WkJICW7rLG\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>What I love about this is that it\u2019s joyous. Not glib, not maudlin, not too specific \u2014 just filled with spirit and energy and good will. This is what would have really reached me when I was young: the site of that huge, happy, heterogenous, homosexual crowd all having fun in one place without it seeming weird or scary or dull or over-the-top. In fact, it captures the spirit of many, many nights I\u2019ve spent out at shows or little clubs over the years, and it makes <i>me<\/i> happy to see it.<\/p>\n<p>On the whole, I\u2019m not a happy person. Believe it or not, I keep a tight lid on most of my moping and griping. The honest truth is that my baseline emotion is one of frustration and futility, peppered with a generous dose of poor self-confidence. You know what, though? The gay thing has never been the cause of that. Sure there were scattered moments of anxiety during the coming-out years, but never despair about that part of the equation. As the realization that I was gay crept up on me, I never thought I was wrong or bad because of it. It was just stressful to figure out how to change course.<\/p>\n<p>I cling to the few and fleeting things in life that make me feel really happy, and the truth is that a lot of them connect to being gay, and I couldn\u2019t be more grateful for that. Whether it\u2019s been the love of interesting men, the comaraderie of friends, the link to a variety of subcultures that resonate with me, or even the increasingly outdated thrill of being a little outr\u00e9, there&#8217;s a lot about being gay that makes parts of my life good. There\u2019s been plenty of pain in life over the years, but the gayness \u2014 the sexual identity, the cultural identity, and the permission to figure out my own way in the absence of an established model to follow \u2014 has generally been the salve, not the sore.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been lucky in that I was able to stay below the radar (mostly) before coming out on my own terms, and then I found that no one loved me any less, or thought any worse of me. Because of that fortune, it\u2019s a little hard to really and truly understand what it&#8217;s like for kid trying to figure all this out in worse circumstances. But you know what? That just makes me even more sure that every kid deserves the love and support that I realized was there all along. And they deserve to find themselves \u2014 if that\u2019s what they want \u2014 in a roomful of energetic, interesting people not just telling them \u2014 but <i>showing<\/i> them \u2014 that it gets better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overall, I\u2019m a big fan of the It Gets Better project. I think it\u2019s an incredibly important message to send out into the world, if only because there are so many kids who really, really need to hear it, and get a little strength and encouragement from it. The world isn\u2019t an easy place, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/08\/it_gets_better\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;It Gets Better&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultragay","category-ultrapersonal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77166,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions\/77166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}